


withered violet, halt your decay

by skydork (klismaphilia)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Captivity, Death Threats, Great Depression, Kidnapping, M/M, Non-Consensual Touching, Physical Abuse, Stockholm Syndrome, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Verbal Abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-23
Updated: 2017-03-23
Packaged: 2018-10-09 13:08:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10412853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/klismaphilia/pseuds/skydork
Summary: Kylo had everything planned. It was a quick hit: they’d be in and out, within a matter of minutes– take the money and run. It was simple. It was brutal. It was a solution.But this is the 30s, a decade of consumption, inflation and depression. Kylo hadeverythingplanned, and the money still slid right through his grasp. No cash, no jewels, no car, no partner.All he got was an impeccably-dressed ginger, unceremoniously restrained by a rope fashioned from knotted factory ties, slumped over on the floor of his dingy two-room apartment.





	

**Author's Note:**

> please READ ALL THE TAGS. thank you.
> 
> this is a (rather belated) birthday fic for @the-qloudlet over on tumblr. the prompt was a kidnapping AU with Kylo as the kidnapper and Hux as the victim... being the nerd I am, it's also a great depression!AU with some twenties themes, as per request ;) I hope this turns out alright, dear!

The year was 1930.

A mere six months earlier and people had been praising the turn of the decade; Hux hadn’t the mind, nor the desire, to acknowledge societal whims. They’d said that after the advancements of industry, the sprawl of urban expansion, there was nowhere for the country to go but “up.”

1929… the end of the Roaring Twenties-- a decade of post-war civility, the incoming wave of machinery and entertainment alike. People were happy, then, longing to celebrate, to be drunk and merry in the spirit of a so-called victory. _Happy,_ Hux thought, and they thought it so good to be alive! They were _happy_ to be mulling about in gentleman's clubs, drinking wine in the shadowy corner of a speakeasy while scantily clad flappers put on a show for them. They were _happy_ to make business deals with shady bourgeois, to throw themselves at a pedestal of grandiosity, just as his father had been.

 _People are thriving. Trains are running. Cities are growing,_ Brendol would always profess, dismissive of his son’s cycle of worry. The ill-mannered frustration and contempt that Armitage seemed to drag with him wherever he went tarnished Brendol’s reputation. _Where's your nationalist pride, your sense of brevity?_ he'd ask, _Why is it you think you can sit around and run your mouth like some bitch in need of a muzzle? Why is it you feel the need to argue with those who keep you alive, boy?_

Armitage was always inclined to answer with a obsequious monotone, _I'm not certain, sir. Perhaps I'll feel better in the summer._

But the summer came and went, just as every other season had, disappearing from his grasp once again with the cycling of an eternal monotony. _Nationalist pride,_ Armitage would muse, _jovial contentment, pleasure, diplomacy. Only words; phrases without a meaning._ He had no pride, no sentiment, no _sanguine_ feeling.

It had been the doctors, he decided, those _heathens_ who so loved reveling in the suffering of others, playing God as though they could dictate his life. _Fragile, weak, too thin, too haggard. Short of breath, feverish._ And his father would always agree, _yes, Armitage is a weak boy. His mother was quite the same-- fell ill with hysteria, that one. Her femininity seems to be rooted in my son as well._

Armitage Hux was a name synonymous with inadequacy and sickness-- the frailty that wrought itself into his very bones, the uncertainty that kept him sidelined and incapable of achieving whatever greatness he had longed for since his youth. It was a poison, his existence, and it would never be changed. Not with time, wealth or power, nor with the boot-licking his father had been so keen on.

America was supposed to be an escape from it all; the great _melting pot_ sister of theirs across the Atlantic, a place ruled by change and equity and free speech.

And yet Hux had never felt more isolated.

It was through a business connection that he’d met Poe Dameron, the man who rapidly became Hux’s greatest taboo and the sole focus of pleasure in his otherwise empty life. A Spaniard, quick with wit and tongue, able to twist minds with his ever-present charm and oozing confidence. Hux supposed a woman might have called him _dreamy,_ a sight from one of those new-fangled motion pictures, smooth skin and caramel eyes and thick, wavy locks of hair. He wore a grin wherever he went, both clever and cocky-- Hux loathed to admit it was intoxicating.

Poe worked onboard a naval vessel, now; the contours of his uniform and ease with command painted him as the American troops’ poster boy. Hux found himself brimming with eagerness as much as jealousy when Poe returned home in full regalia; he’d wanted to be an officer, always had. Strategy seemed his only forte, the battlefield a chessboard filled with endless possibilities; he knew Verdun better than the generals serving there, could engineer a mechanized weapon with a practiced ease held only by those who oversaw design.

Instead, he’d become a tailor.

It was this _weak_ body that held him back-- when Poe shipped out or was made to leave on assignment, Hux stayed in New York, reading and designing and _dressing_ the upperclass for distasteful parties and lavish gatherings. On occasion, he might even find himself invited to attend; Lady Rey in particular was quite fond of Poe, and by extension, saw it a necessity to try and humor his _despondent_ partner.

And humored he was. Be it a lack of morality or a sinister boredom, Hux found himself accepting invitation, allowing himself _company_ in the presence of his inner depression.

How ironic, it was, that he hadn’t even the capacity to care for the economic downfall. How _ironic_ that he was able to muster the audacity for _disdain,_ that he could scoff at how pitiful the world around him had become, shambles and dirt and the scattering of human limbs along a traumatized city.

The year was 1930. The stock market had just crashed. His father had not put forth an effort to contact Hux in nearly half a decade.

So, as those who have nothing to live for always seem to do, Hux attended a party.

 

* * *

 

Kylo Ren was a proprietor of unluckiness, a friend to misfortune.

Snoke was gone; he’d disappeared into the streets with an empty promise rolling off his silver tongue, promising Kylo, _assuring_ him that he’d be back before the night ended. Of course, hours passed, each stroke of the clock, each beat of shoes-on-wood driving Kylo back into a corner of regret and fraudulence he couldn’t escape. Snoke had been long removed from the scene when the police came speeding up, their cars like black-and-silver warriors clad in a tight shell of impenetrable armor. Kylo could feel a damning uneasiness spread about his body; his teeth clenched tight, joints stiff and rigidly held, hammered in by some wretched force. A woozy sensation flooded his head, and his stomach lurched upward into his throat, acidic bile welling deep within.

The situation was confounding.

Kylo hardly wanted to be here to begin with. He hadn’t set the scene, after all, but he’d been hard up and swamped, battered into the ground with the onslaught of dreaded prospects characteristic to the Depression. It wasn’t reaching when he claimed the Depression ruined his life-- decimated whatever fragments of his mentality were still intact. Snoke was the best option... the _only_ option.

And he’d run off with the money like a cowardly wretch.

_Well._

Kylo ducked back further, deep into the shrouded corner of a hallowed room, shadows cast over the hallway from shuttered windows lining each wall outside. A gun sat at the line of his hip, quick to be drawn if the need arose. At the very least, his expertise with a firearm was second to none, except perhaps, the man he had allowed to train him.

 _You’d do well as a smuggler,_ Han had thought it wise to remind him, a hand on his shoulder while Kylo leaned back against the hood of a beat-up car. _Got the quick hands and good eyes for it, Ben. Just like your old man, eh?_

 _Better,_ he’d said then. _Better, for my lack of sentiment. Better because I have nothing to lose._

Well. He’d been wrong on that front, hadn’t he? There was always something to lose, be it wealth, love or livelihood.

Footsteps echoed, the heavy steps patterned in hard thuds over the degraded wooden boards of the corridor. Kylo took in his breath, held it and shuffled his way back, paused near the wall with a hand on his holstered weapon. The adrenaline in his veins pumped louder, deep and harrowing through his blood with heady pulses that traversed his spine, brought him to heel.

A board creaked and the door opened-- without thinking, Kylo lunged.

 

* * *

 

 

To say that Hux had been expecting some misfortune was as much a lie as it was truth.

To say that Kylo Ren had little integrity to sacrifice was a testament to how far he had fallen.

Capitalism has always been the true Devil.

 

* * *

 

 

The man, Kylo realised, was almost too lovely to be real. Here, in this time of filth and squalor, was a being of true beauty, a fair creature lying sprawled across the floor of his dingy tenement, with red-gold eyelashes shading his bloodless cheeks, pretty pink lips barely parted as his slack body fell with ease onto Kylo’s bed. He donned a suit, something fine, tailored to a slim frame with an outfitting of pewter buttons down a grey shirt, black slacks in pristine condition, shoes not even scuffed at the toe.

Nothing Kylo observed had dared to appear so _rich,_ so ethereally _pretty_ and untainted. And yet he was a human being! A person, real and whole, unconscious atop Kylo’s rumpled sheets and wilted mattress, waifish and regal like a British prince. His red hair was messy, strewn about his face, even short as it was, and his chest heaved up and down, straining for air he could not possibly intake.

Kylo didn’t know why he had stolen a man, of all things.

Ransom, perhaps? Though that might have shown he was no better than Snoke, falling low enough to kidnap a defenseless creature like this, to keep him tied up and anchored in his home like a doll.

He found a length of rope, unmended and unkempt, and began to tie those slim white wrists, looping the rough material over and over as he wrenched the ginger’s arms above his head and left them hanging from the headboard. It was a garish display, he would acknowledge-- crude and utterly _taboo_ from how it might appear, the obscenity doubling as he began to undo the buttons over the man’s shirt, to slip off his shoes and take down his slacks, tossing them onto the dusty floor.

If nothing else, his clothes would be good to pawn.

Kylo barely had a chance to notice the other stir, didn’t watch those cobweb lashes flutter open for the first time, piercing even as Hux faltered in confusion.

“Where…?”

The robber’s head shot up, and his alertness screeched like the blare of a siren; he pressed himself over the slim aristocrat, contemptuous as he was intrigued.

“Stay quiet,” he snapped, and the man blinked with shock.

“What do you mean, ‘stay qui--’”

 _“Exactly what I said.”_ Kylo continued, and his hand smothered those pretty lips, obscuring whatever words his captive had to say. “You will do as I say-- _precisely_ what I say, or there will be a consequence.”

The red-haired man’s eyes grew wide, and he gasped, a stuttered, despairing breath against Kylo’s skin. His weight shifted, a knee pressing upward to jam into Kylo’s side, the futile struggle against his binds only beginning. _Weak, still too weak,_ and he came alive with vitriol, his restrained arms throttling into the sharp wood of the headboard, only beginning to notice the chill of bumps raised over his chest, his bare skin too exposed, too--

And he shouted-- shouted into the muffling of Kylo’s hand, his teeth snapping at that calloused palm, desperate for leverage in his dirty movement.

Kylo’s grip tightened, his second hand covering the width of his captive’s hollow throat, pressing tight over his Adam’s apple and digging broken nails into the soft hollow of his pulse point.

“Close your mouth.” He said. _“Now!”_

And though the other’s green eyes still burned in hatred, he obeyed. His face shifted, turning to the side to gaze at a boarded window before Kylo was prying his mouth open with two fingers.

“What’s your name?” Kylo questioned, holding a white cloth in one hand, a threat to the other’s sovereignty should he refuse to cooperate. His fingers slid over that plush lower lip, teasing the other’s slack, open cavern as he waited.

“Armitage,” the man said, haughty. His chin jerked as Kylo dipped fingers to his jaw, gripping the meat of his cheek to haul him forward so their gazes met.

And then, as he’d been planning to do from the moment the man woke, Kylo shoved the gag between Armitage’s lips.

He stood-- whirled on his heel toward the door, only sparing a glance behind him. The empty cry of pure rage which sounded was not enough to catch his ear, nor keep it; Armitage may have been pretty, but he was as disgusting inside as the rest of the upper class, those who thought themselves in power and yet bartered it away like a gambling chip. Kylo didn’t need to waste time listening to him speak.

“If there’s another use than speech for that pretty mouth of yours, perhaps I’ll remove the gag. For now you will stay in this position-- on your back, tied down and incapable of hurting yourself. If anything is moved by the time I return from work, I will know… and you will suffer.”

The door slammed.

A key turned in the lock and the iron knob held tight.

 

* * *

 

 

The first few days are hell.

Kylo screams, on the end of a telephone, when he returns from work, whenever he’s forced to lay eyes upon Hux; his words are uncouth, and it’s more than once that he’s grabbed Hux by the edge of his scrawny shoulders, shook him and throttled his brain while Hux lashed out, the arm he’d freed grappling until he can curl fingers into Ren’s hair and _rip_ it, clawing at his face with rough nails until a gash appears across his jaw and a bright line of crimson springs to the surface.

He leaves infrequently, but each time he takes another item, sells it off for whatever money he can manage to get; and each time he returns to a dismal room, to the sound of hissed whines from a bedroom.

Hux has torn at the mattress so often it has begun to pill; his head slams back and forth when Kylo grabs him and hauls him up and waits for him to stop struggling, give into their predicament. Hux never does; his knees slam into Kylo’s groin, even when his arms are wrenched behind his back, when he’s pressed back against the wall only to throw his body at Kylo, once, twice, again, again, shoulders heaving, head spinning, _dark dark black pitch-- hate you, get off of me!_

Kylo hits Hux harder, shoves him away; if he finds him out of bed, he drags him back, throws him down and redoes his knots, tighter each time until he nearly cuts the man’s already lacking circulation. The blows are so hard that Hux once finds himself light-headed and with a stream of urine leaking down his thighs, the subject of humiliation by his own body.

And Kylo curses-- _why, why do you try to defy me, why do you continue to fight when you’re so weak!_

He spends hours away; hours that Hux uses to sleep, curled onto his side in the dark, uncertain of passing time or of the world outside this room. Logically, he knows it can’t have been more than seventy-two hours-- mentally, he can’t tell. He knows nothing beside his own shame and his disdain for Kylo, the disdain reflected in the snap of his jaw as he lunges at the man when he next opens the door, attempting to bite at his fingers and gnaw them off completely.

“I _hate you!”_ Armitage curses. “Let me go, let me go, _letmegoyousonofabitch!_ ”

And Kylo refuses, time after time, dragging Armitage back into bed and forcing his mouth open as he attempts to feed him, the worthless measures needed to keep him alive. He pours water down his throat, makes Armitage cough and splutter through it, drool sliding down his face and tears welling up in his eyes, shuddering and pleading with his nails sunk into Kylo’s chiseled arms.

When he falls asleep, Kylo will hold him, curl around his back and press the man to his chest, admiring the _slightness_ of the naked form and yet feeling nothing but guilt for it; he never allows himself to stay for long. Not when he looks at Armitage and sees _himself,_ the monster that Snoke has made of him, the beast that _this man_ must think he is.

Kylo finds himself on the floor, curled in on his own body and shaking with restlessness that ebbs into guilt. He tries to contact Snoke, again and again, never any luck, _always so unlucky-!_

One morning he stands, gathers his jacket… and leaves.

 

* * *

 

 

Kylo loathes derision. He hates, just as he has always hated, being dismissed, called _naive_ and _boyish,_ as if he is somehow an innocent, as though he cannot understand the world, nor his own actions. His mother had always thought him boyish, a fragile, _guileless_ figure in the midst of an awful society.

He is far from innocent.

The corruption of cities, of capitalist greed and the post-war strife leveling whatever remained of his home country, has seen to that; Snoke has seen to it, pushing him until he broke, abandoning him to an agonizing fate of imprisonment and self-immolation. And yet Kylo is too perturbed to be morose, too _angry_ to let the past slip away from him.

He finds Armitage a pressing reminder of his own weakness, as it is.

Each night he would come home to a muffled struggling from behind his bedroom door, the sight of scratches over the bedpost, a lithe body flung halfway off his bed and still pulling feebly at the binds, red hair matted with sweat and greasy from lack of care, those skinny legs twisting and lashing out, kicking at him as Armitage’s raw voice let loose from behind his gag, _no, no, no, monster, you won’t get away with it, you won’t--!_

And Kylo, ever incapable of controlling himself, screams-- he presses his body atop Armitage’s and slams his head back against the drywall, curls fingers over his throat in criss-crossing patterns as he chokes him. He screams himself raw, unable to even piece together his withered emotion, the resentment seated at the very core of him.

 _I hate you, you worthless little bastard! I should kill you right now, I should, it’s better than you deserve, thrashing about like that, like you’re even worth this much effort! You’re a frail, sickly_ wraith, _I wouldn’t be surprised if you were already dead! What are you good for anyway?! You better have someone willing to pay to get you back, you damnable prick, otherwise I’ll throw you out the window and be done with it!_

And Kylo cries.

He screams himself raw, he falls apart and he drowns his agony with tears and a bottle of moonshine.

He wonders if it’s wrong, that he can’t even be sure whether he’s the captor or the captive.

He’s ran through paper after paper, looked through the few materials that Armitage had on him, and still there’s nothing that could provide him the slightest achievement in lieu of the man’s existence here; no, nobody looking for him, no _ties_ in this country aside from a listing that marks him as an entrepreneur, a _tailor,_ for whatever that’s worth.

Kylo has never thought himself more hopeless than this, a mess over his own crimes, poorer than even before and with a disobedient, _worthless_ victim to boot.

One day, he hauls Armitage from his bed, nearly throws him to the ground, not minding the harsh _ah-!_ he emits when he lands. His maladroit fingers work free the gag from his mouth, pull him up to his knees the best he can, looking over his sweat-lined, protruding spine, sharp shoulderblades that shift in a manner one could only consider erotic.

“Get up,” Kylo says, but his voice isn’t harsh, isn’t commanding; he sounds weakened, pathetically beaten at his own game.

“Don’t feel like _forcing_ me?” Armitage asks when Kylo grips his hair in one hand.

“I could,” Kylo begins, and then as if taken by a second thought, pauses. His hand trails along the curve of his captive’s neck, down along one slim arm as he continues, breath hot along the shell of Armitage’s ear, “You’re at my mercy, aren’t you?”

“Probably.” Armitage shudders, though he cannot help but heave a sigh of relief once Kylo releases his shoulder, then helps him struggle onto one foot, only for his body to slump sideways into the offending arms that so repulse him. “Are you finally going to _feed_ me?”

“I should,” a pause. “I will. But I want you in the bath first. You reek of your own filth--”

“That’s what happens when you don’t unbind me for days,” the older man mutters, though his shoulders seem less tight, more relaxed. “Why are you doing this?”

Kylo doesn’t reply. Not because he doesn’t want to speak-- but because the only words he can summon are _I haven’t any clue._

 

* * *

 

 

The act itself seems surreal, as though they’ve both been transported beyond the dimensions of whatever realm still lies beyond the walls of Kylo’s home. Kylo is gentle when he settles Armitage into the warm water, still filling the washbasin, when he drags a cloth over the contours of his back, down his legs and around the mess that still clings to the man’s groin, careful to move his hand as Hux’s legs jolt and wrench back.

He holds a cup to Armitage’s mouth, barely pressing and only tilting it when Hux turns his head and tilts it back just enough to lap up the freezing water when it rolls onto his tongue, down the back of his parched throat.

His throat is nearly too sore to be capable of swallowing-- everything is sore, aching from abrupt binding and rigidity of his muscles. As though sensing the discomfort, Kylo’s hand hovers just over Armitage’s shoulder, pausing mid-motion before hesitantly, gently settling his hand on the knotted muscle.

“Don’t,” Armitage begins, then clamps his mouth shut as though thinking better of it. Kylo rips himself away, regardless, his eyes averted from the smooth flesh lying just beneath the surface of clear liquid inside the basin.

“You should eat.” Kylo begins-- and reconsiders, “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”

Armitage gives his head a little shake, hardly notable; the only indication he heard anything beyond his staggered breath and the staccato of blood pumping from his diminished heart and into his body.

 _Don’t move,_ he thinks, wryly. _As if I had anywhere to go, regardless._

 

* * *

 

 

Hux could almost pretend he was in a different place, when his eyes were closed and the only noise surrounding him was the unsteady rise-and-fall of his own breath.

He pictured a soft mattress with white sheets, stark and lacking personality even as they were utterly familiar. He thinks of an arm wrapped around his waist, a form pressed tight against his back, soft brown curls tickling the flesh of his frozen shoulder.

He imagines Poe, laughing at the way he shivers, trying to roll Hux over with the subtle cue of _“look at me, Armitage”_ that he utters whenever Hux appears to be out of sorts. He thinks of kisses, peppered along the exposed column of his brittle neck, of eyes that gazed deep into his when he seethed with anger and “ _you can’t just leave me here, Dameron, not again!”_

He thinks of making love, of settling atop Poe with thighs splayed over his hips, riding his cock and devouring the officer’s open mouth with a filthy, salacious kiss. He imagines hands on his hips, squeezed tight and anchoring him to the ground, of Poe’s breath along his neck when he manages to admit, _“I’m scared.”_

Hux knows-- he’s scared too. Scared of being found out, of his _father_ disowning him, or locking him in a hospital out of disgrace. He’s scared, somehow, that everything up to this point has been some sort of cruel joke, that the _kidnapping,_ the here and now, is the only reality he’s ever been privy to.

He tries not to listen to the screams from the hallway.

But then, Hux has never been good at avoiding conflict; he’s a _product_ of conflict, of his asinine father forcing himself on a servant, of a disdain that led him to travel across an ocean and abandon whatever status he’d held before.

His captor is a strange man, with empty, doe-like eyes that appear on the verge of tears at any given moment. He’s always a mess when he returns, torn suspenders and pants riddled with tears and snags in the too-light fabric. Hux thinks he heard someone call him _Ren,_ once.

Ren, as it is, doesn’t have the capacity to play a game like this-- he’s emotionally volatile, distraught, not run-down in the manner Hux has been, his emotions discarded and replaced by a void of lingering emptiness, something to subsume his emotions until he manages to break free. No, Ren is _primal,_ and desperate, and he yells so frequently and so _painfully_ that it’s a wonder he hasn’t acted on his words yet, killed Hux as soon as they’d met.

And more than that, why he bothered to clean him, to wipe the grime and Hux’s own fluids off his skin with a worn washing rag, why he’d combed Hux’s hair out until it was bright and glowing once more, why he’d been so _gentle,_ carrying Hux away to his bathroom, depositing him in the tub before leaving to fetch him something to eat, even if it were little more than bread and butter.

He doesn’t know why it is that, after another endless array of broken walls, smashed chairs and shattered plates, he finally calls out to the man, beckons him like a pet, with Hux as his improbable savior.

“R---nn.” Hux spits through the gag, attempting to work the material off of his tongue. “--en!”

And Ren turns; looks to him, his gaze foggy, head tilted downward.

His voice is low when he speaks. “Why am I even doing this?”

Hux doesn’t answer-- he doesn’t even know whether he’d be able to without the cloth pressed between his teeth, without his own tumultuous train of thought, derailing with every moment he spends in this rat’s pit.

He shakes his head, then; Ren’s eyes do not leave his form, only drawing a gaze over him, examining Hux’s shivering body, broken and bruised across every centimeter of his lily-pale skin. Hux draws his legs closer to himself, a defensive position that is unlikely to provide any security. He tilts his head up, red-rimmed eyes passing over Ren’s crestfallen visage.

Ren, with a few hasty steps, crosses the room. His hand extends, stroking along the dip of Hux’s collarbone, thumbing over his ghastly cheek as he begins to undo the cloth preventing Hux from being heard.

“I’m… I’m sorry.” Ren professes.

Hux tears his gaze away; his eyes prickle at the corners, something akin to concentrated drops of acid stinging his face wherever they fall. Kylo’s arm encircles his shoulders, the flimsy mattress dipping beneath his greater weight; Hux’s teeth find his lip, dig in deep and tear at the flesh as best he can. He refuses to move first-- refuses to shiver, to _cry._

“Are you?”

“Yes,” Ren continues, one hand fitting snug along the curve of Hux’s waist, kneading at the bare flesh of his inverted stomach. “You don’t have to believe me.”

“I don’t,” Hux responds. He clears his throat, shifts his position as much as he can. “I have-- had a lover. I would appreciate if if you didn’t touch me like that.”

“Would you?” In contradiction, the weight at his side grows, until there are arms slung around the entirety of Hux’s middle, hoisting him into an over-large lap, resettling to accommodate his body. Hux can’t help but quiver in revulsion.

“Yes, I would.”

A thumb traces along each notch of his spine, tenderly slides over the back of his neck in admiration. “How did he touch you, Armitage?”

“That’s not any of your business.” Hux clamps his mouth shut, rigid as a brick wall, immovable, unresponsive. Kylo seems to think better of his action, pulling away and sliding onto the bed, still facing Hux.

“Lie down with me.” There’s no room in the statement for disobedience; Hux complies, though he turns his face to match with Kylo’s, allowing the other man to drag the blanket up and over his obscenity.

“How long are you going to keep me here?”

There’s no answer; Kylo rolls onto his other side, ignores Hux’s question altogether. “Go to sleep, Armitage.”

Hux makes a noise of agreement, yet it matters not.

**He doesn’t sleep that night. He doesn’t even close his eyes.**


End file.
